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Cognitive Dissonance & the Campus Visit

***If you haven't already, it's time to schedule your first meeting for April!***From the blog:

All of my families hear me say this in the beginning of their college search:  “I go on a lot of tours.”

And it’s true.  I do.  Though I haven’t seen nearly as many campuses as many of my counterparts in the IECA, I travel to many each year to find out what makes them a great fit for a particular student.  Already in 2013, I have the months of April, June, October, and November fully booked with tours and I’m still looking for some others to fill the other months.  (For an educational consultant, tours are our mainstay.  We can’t help students if we don’t know what’s going on out there!)

Most of the families I work with, on the other hand, don’t go on a lot of tours.  Over the course of the average high school junior and senior’s college searches, most families will see somewhere between eight and fifteen schools.  (Only in one extreme case did I encounter a family who had been to 40 campuses in order to find the right one – which, of course, turned out to be lucky number 41.)  But when I say that families will “see” a number of campuses, I don’t necessarily mean that they will experience what those campuses are like.  Sure, they’ll step inside buildings and maybe even meet with faculty and a coach or two, as well as chatting with some current students along the way – but what I’ve seen more and more lately on my campus visits (and remember – that’s a lot!) is that many families visit campuses, ask questions, and come away having learned absolutely nothing new or helpful about the institution.  How is that possible? Read More